Editorial pitch & proposed interview
Status: Unpublished proposal
Role: Research, writing and interview development
On painting beyond the canvas, our relationship with the spaces we inhabit, and finding freedom in the things we cannot control.
Editorial Pitch
What happens when a painter starts thinking beyond the canvas?
Renée Levi doesn’t seem particularly interested in knowing exactly where a painting will end before she begins it. She prepares carefully, thinking through the surface, materials, scale and colours. But once she starts, the painting has to find its way through the act of making it. For an artist who began as an architect, a discipline built around plans and projections, there is something striking about how much she leaves to the moment itself.
Her latest work, September, brings that way of thinking into public view. Made over two years in Basel and now covering part of the concrete façade of London’s Hayward Gallery, the two panel painting is difficult to miss. Fluorescent colour and silver lines run around the building’s long horizontal window, shifting with the daylight and with the position of whoever happens to be passing below.
Despite its scale, Levi resists describing September as monumental. For her, monumentality begins when architecture makes the person standing before it feel small. Here, the body remains the measure. The marks come from the reach of her arms and the movement of her body, so even across Hayward's vast exterior, the painting retains something of the person who made it.
September begins with an intensely physical act made by one person, then enters a city where it becomes part of other people’s days. The work will remain on the Hayward Gallery from 23 September until 15 November 2026, and Levi has said it will only be finished when it comes down. During those eight weeks, people will encounter it at different times, from different places and in different circumstances. Some will return to it without meaning to, while others may pass beneath it without noticing it at all. The work changes with the weather and the light, but also with the simple fact that no two encounters with it will be quite the same.
Proposed Interview Questions
I. On Becoming an Artist, Identity and Place
01. Before becoming a painter, you trained as an architect and worked with Herzog & de Meuron. Was there a moment when being an artist stopped feeling like something you were becoming but began to feel like something you already were?
02. You were born in Istanbul and moved to Switzerland when you were just four. How have the different cities you've called home shaped your relationship with art and architecture?
03. Your latest commission, September, takes over the Hayward Gallery's iconic Brutalist façade. In a recent conversation with Art Basel, you mentioned having a problem with the word 'Brutalist', adding that it was another story. What's the story?
II. On September, Public Space and Visibility
04. Your latest commission, September, transforms the exterior of London's Hayward Gallery through a monumental two-panel painting. Could you tell us a little about the work and how the project came to life?
05. You spent two years developing September in Basel while imagining its place in London. How much of the finished work belongs to the city you imagined, rather than the one that exists?
06. You mentioned that some people will walk past September without ever looking up from their phones. An artwork doesn't necessarily lose its value by going unnoticed, but what about the person who misses it? What do you think we're missing when even something monumental can slip past our attention?
07. If September could exist somewhere entirely outside the art world, where would you want to see it?
III. On Colour, Emotion and Perception
08. Your work is often described as joyful and energetic, yet you've spoken of September as containing both despair and hope. Is there a darker emotional dimension to your use of colour that people might overlook?
09. As people bring their own interpretations to September, is there anything about the painting that you hope they might misunderstand?
10. When a line goes somewhere you did not expect, at what point does it stop being a mistake and become part of the painting?
V. On Painting Beyond the Canvas
11. You often treat walls, windows and architecture as extensions of your paintings. If a painting doesn't have to end at the edge of a canvas, where does it end?
12. You've said September will only truly be finished on the day it comes down. To you, in what ways does a painting continue beyond the moment it comes down?
